Category Archives: Business Ventures

Thoughts on Publishing – A Video Blog Post – Reading Chapter Nine of Magic’s Stealing

Today I’m doing a reading of chapter nine from Magic’s Stealing, my YA fantasy novella. I’m using my new microphone, plus, I have a few updates regarding some of the other projects you should see coming soon from Infinitas Publishing. 😀

Click here for the link if you can’t see the video.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

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Thoughts on Publishing – A Video Blog Post – Reading Chapter Eight of Magic’s Stealing

Today I’m doing a reading of chapter eight from my YA Fantasy, Magic’s Stealing.  Better yet, I’m using my all-new Blue Yeti microphone I got for Christmas (Thanks Mom and Dad!). 😀

The sound should now be clearer than before, but since I’m still new to using the microphone, I may still need to make a few adjustments to get the best sound quality. Let me know if anything in particular stands out to you, or if it sounds good as-is.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy listening to chapter eight. 🙂

Click here for the link if you can’t see the video.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

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Thoughts on Publishing – Infinitas Publishing Status Report

First day of the new year, and time for a status report. 🙂

Magic’s Stealing: I’m currently working on promoting Magic’s Stealing. Primarily, I’ve been looking to get this book into local bookstores (Three nearby stores currently carry copies of the book. Woot!) The next step is holding book signings to raise awareness of the book’s existence. I’m also planning to hold a Goodreads give-away, so look for that to come soon. Isaac and I intend to get a P.O. Box so we don’t have to use our personal address when sending out copies. We may also start a newsletter once we get the P.O. Box address (since newsletters require a mailing address be included).

The Shadow War: While I haven’t made much progress writing the second book of The Wishing Blade series, I have gotten quite a bit plotted for both the second and third books. My hope is to finish editing what I already have written, then write both the end of book two, and the parts I already know of book three (or at least create a detailed outline).

The Multiverse Chronicles: Trials of Blood and Steel: Our beta-reader has given us comments on the first six episodes, so I’m ready to make the polishing edits to those episodes. I’m almost finished editing episode seven. Once we release Battle Decks, we’ll also start releasing this series. In the meantime, I’m trying to get ahead with writing these episodes. Isaac and I have discussed releasing each episodes on Friday (on their own separate blog page), thus taking place of these Friday blog posts. The goal is to give me more time to get an episode edited each week.

Battle Decks: Trials of Blood and Steel: Isaac and I recently reviewed our proof copies of the basic and deluxe editions. We’ve sent a few questions to The Game Crafter regarding printing, and in the meantime, we’ve got a few ideas about improving the rules document for clarity. We also decided to go ahead and make the rules document a booklet after shuffling through six separate pages, which was proving to be a real pain. It may still be a while before we release the game for sale, but we want this game to be polished as possible. Also, if all goes well, we’re hoping to demo this game at a new, local convention in February. More on that later, once we’ve solidified the details. 😉

SBibb’s Photographic Illustration: I’m plugging away on covers as usual, and I’m going to start writing the due dates in a planner to keep track of when I need to start each proof to get them completed by the preferred time.

Beta-reading: I have a book I’m beta-reading for a friend in the writing group I attend, and this is going much slower than I expected (partially due to all the recent holiday activity). On the bright side, I’m taking a few vacation days in January, so that should give me more time to read and make notes, and I plan to include reading time in my planner as well.

Distant Horizon: At this point, Isaac and I feel that the basic story is complete. It’s been through many different beta-readers, and we’ve let it sit while working on other projects. I’ve recently started working on basic formatting for this particular story, with the intent of looking for typos and minor grammatical issues. We don’t expect to release Distant Horizon just yet, and we don’t currently have a projected release date. However I want to start working on proofing, since I know that takes awhile. Depending on how well that goes, the release date may be sooner or later. The front cover is complete, however, with only a few minor changes expected.

Video Blogging: Back in October, Isaac and I started doing video blogs with readings from my stories. If you haven’t already, check out the Infinitas Publishing Youtube channel to listen to chapters of Magic’s Stealing and various short stories.

That’s it for now. I hope you enjoyed this post. 🙂

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Thoughts on Publishing – A Video Blog Post – Reading Chapter Seven of Magic’s Stealing

Last time, I read The Dragon’s Tree, a short children’s story that my husband, Isaac, wrote. Getting back into the usual trend of Monday video blogs, today I’m reading chapter seven from my young adult fantasy, Magic’s Stealing. 🙂

As a side note, if all goes well, I’ll be using a new microphone with higher sound quality for the next reading.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy chapter seven. 🙂

Click here for the link if you can’t see the video.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

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Thoughts on Publishing – A Video Blog Post – Reading “The Dragon’s Tree”

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Today I’m doing a Holiday Special video blog. Instead of reading a chapter from Magic’s Stealing, I’m reading a children’s story that Isaac wrote. He modeled the style after the style of fables. It’s called The Dragon’s Tree. We hope you enjoy it. 🙂

Click here for the link if you can’t see the video.

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Thoughts on Publishing – A Video Blog Post – Reading Chapter Six of Magic’s Stealing

Today, I’ve not only got chapter six of Magic’s Stealing read for you, I’ve also got an announcement: I’ve got books!

My order of fifty books came in today, so I shall soon be approaching local bookstores and I am currently debating doing a Goodreads giveaway. 😀

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the reading. 🙂

Click here for the link if you can’t see the video.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

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Thoughts on Publishing – A Video Blog Post – Reading Chapter Five of Magic’s Stealing

Woot! I actually got this recording done on time! Anyway, here it is: the video blog post and the reading of Magic’s Stealing, chapter five. I hope you enjoy it. 🙂

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

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Thoughts on Publishing – Infinitas Publishing Status Report

It’s that time again! Time to evaluate the current status of Infinitas Publishing. 🙂

The Wishing Blade: Magic’s Stealing: As of Monday, the first book is complete. Done. Finis. I’ve finished proofing the print edition and approved it through Createspace. I’ve also uploaded the updated versions to Smashwords and Kindle. If it has the Cirenan map in the preview, then it should be the updated edition.

Magic’s Stealing is now available in paperback! 😀

The Wishing Blade: The Shadow War (Book Two): My NaNoWriMo goal of fully revising the first half of this book fell through, but I did get a bit further in on the edits. I’ve also been plotting a bit of backstory that may or may not make it into the final version. This book may take a bit longer to work through than its predecessor (It’s longer, for one thing. The rough draft is currently the same length as the first book), but now that my time is starting to free up again (Finished several book covers, just about finished with a surprise bit of dental work, and releasing the print edition of Magic’s Stealing) I should have more time now to actually proceed with writing.

The Multiverse Chronicles: Trials of Blood and Steel: I haven’t made a whole lot of progress here, either. Our beta reader has read the first four episodes, and I recently sent her the fifth episode. I’m hoping to work on the sixth episode in the next few days, and go from there. Our plan is still to release the first six episodes around the same time that we release Battle Decks: Trials of Blood and Steel, and then an episode a week after that.

Isaac has been making good progress on the rough draft of the second season, though. He’s currently on episode 19, and once all the episodes are complete, he plans to go back and do basic edits before handing them off to me. 🙂

Battle Decks - Steam Tank Preview Card

Battle Decks: Trials of Blood and Steel: We’re off our target schedule for this, but we have made progress. We’ve updated all the cards, updated the rules and glossary (which need to be proofread… one of our weekend plans) and we’ve finished the new Steam Tank card, which replaced an older card. (I’ve included a sneak peak of the game card… minus the rounded corners and general trimming). This weekend, our goal is to refit the box art to the smaller boxes, finalize the last few tweaks, and order a proof of the updated game.

SBibb’s Photographic Illustration: I’m finishing up the last of a string of covers I was working on last month, and I only have a couple covers slated for this month, which gives me time to catch up on some of my other projects. Of course, I’ll be posting the behind-the-scenes info as the publishers and authors release their covers to the public. 🙂

In the meantime, I have a manuscript that I need to beta-read for a friend. I’m hoping to finish my read-through in the next two weeks, in order to give her time for her own personal deadlines.

That’s all for now. I have a book cover to finalize tonight, and tomorrow I have a new cover proof to start before I get back to work editing The Multiverse Chronicles.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this status report. 🙂

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Thoughts on Publishing – A Video Blog Post – Reading Chapter Four of Magic’s Stealing

Well, I had planned on getting this post up yesterday, but there was fun holiday decorating to attend to. So the video a day late, but here is the reading of chapter four of Magic’s Stealing. In other news, I’ve finished proof-reading the print edition, which should be available on Amazon in a few days. 😀

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

I hope you enjoy this post. 🙂

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Thoughts on Publishing – A Video Blog Post – Reading Chapter Three of Magic’s Stealing

Today I’ve got another video blog post for you. I’m trying to move the video blogs to Mondays or Wednesdays to give me more time to prepare. In this one I’m reading chapter three of Magic’s Stealing. 🙂

Here’s the Youtube link in case you can’t see it.

You can hear the first chapter here.

Or chapter two here.

I’ve begun noticing a few tricks that are helpful when doing online readings.

The main one?

Slow down and enunciate.

This helps to prevent blurred phrases that don’t make sense once recorded, and lends to a natural pause between sentences. Having those pauses while reading allows for easier cutting in the editing phase, especially if you leave a longer pause where you know you’re going to cut something.

Then, once you take the recording into an editor like Premiere Pro, you can easily identify spots where you read a sentence twice and chop it without having to play that same sentence over and over (and over again) just to get a decent cut.

Also, once you get familiar with the program, you can figure out how to save the files correctly the first (or second time), rather than having the program complain that it can’t export properly with every format you try. In my case, I use the Microsoft Avi format (at least for now) to get the audio recording, and I have to remember to name the file I want to save before encoding it. Otherwise, it gives me an error.

The whole reading phase (including practice reads) and editing phase still takes me an hour or two. But it’s fun, and I enjoy getting to read the stories aloud. I blame being a Speech and Debate student in high school for four years for that one. Or maybe I was in Speech and Debate for four years because I enjoyed the readings…

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this post. 🙂

 

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